Reading back this mini reflection from the fall of my sophomore year in GEM205 is pretty funny to me now. I did end up going to both Spain and England but that was after I went to China. China, as well as Indonesia where I traveled later, were definitely less similar to the United States, as I could have anticipated based off of this reflection. I think that if I had told the version of myself that wrote this that I would have chosen to go to China just a few months later for the summer, I would have probably been pretty surprised as I had at that point imagined myself studying abroad for the fall semester of my junior year. Spain and the UK were my options at that point because of the Wesleyan-Vassar program that allows students to go to Madrid and because the UK would have likely been my only other option to go to with my language skills. I am very happy with the countries I have been able to spend time in and reading this back makes me even more grateful for the experiences I have had.
I remember this particular assignment because after having this story circle zoom, I ended up getting the phone number and texting one of the girls on the call. The two of us had a great conversation about women’s rights in both Argentina and the United States. I remember her having this perspective that in the United States we had completely equal opportunity and I had agreed with her but told her about some of the struggles that women have to be taken as seriously socially. This conversation was pretty eye opening for both of us, and I was able to listen to her struggles being a women in Argentina. It was interesting for me to hear that although Argentina has a representative democracy, there are still struggles for marginalised groups even more than there are in the United States.
Reflection Paper:
This story circle went very well. I was put into one group for half the time and another group for the rest of the time. In both those groups, we talked about how different parts of our countries have different cultures and accents. In both of our countries, we like to make fun of other accents. A lot of them were not from Buenos Aires and instead from places with slightly different cultures and ways of speaking than the city. I found this story circle interesting because I had considered going to Argentina for my off campus immersion. While I am not planning on going there anymore, it would have been interesting to experience living somewhere with less of a socioeconomic status. Instead, I am probably going to go to either Spain or England, which is probably going to be a lot more similar to living in the United States. One thing I have been concerned about is how much money I have to make before going on to study abroad because I know that Europe is a lot more expensive. That would likely be less of a problem if I went to Argentina, but I wonder what other problems I would encounter instead. In both of the story circles, I appreciated how everyone was very interested in learning about each other. I think this created a space where people were happy to ask questions which kept the conversations going.
